There is not a lot of good news to announce at the moment, said EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell on Monday, but this is definitely good news: the long-standing deadlock on accession negotiations with North Macedonia and Albania has now been resolved; a “historical moment”. Borrell particularly emphasized the role of the North Macedonian parliament: its vote “opened a door”.
In fact, there has at least been some movement in the completely deadlocked process. On Saturday, the North Macedonian parliament approved a framework for negotiations intended to defuse the conflict with neighboring EU member Bulgaria – and to dissolve its blockade. Bulgaria has been blocking accession negotiations with North Macedonia since 2020 – and is demanding that the neighboring country first adjust its own official historiography to that of Bulgaria.
For example, the Bulgarian occupation during World War II should no longer be described as “fascist” in school textbooks, and Sofia insists that the country’s language is actually just a dialect of Bulgarian. The new negotiation framework, which is intended to resolve the conflict and is based on a French compromise proposal, provides, among other things, for North Macedonia to change its constitution and explicitly recognize the Bulgarian minority in the country. In return, Bulgaria has agreed to fully recognize the language and identity of the “Macedonian people”.
68 of the 120 MPs in the Skopje parliament voted for the French compromise proposal. The parliamentary group of the national-conservative opposition party VMRO-DPNME left the hall before the vote. The previous debates were accompanied by demonstrations on the streets of Skopje. One slogan read, for example: “North Macedonia is not for sale”.
Prime Minister Dimitar Kovacevski, on the other hand, had advocated accepting an “imperfect agreement”. Foreign Minister Bujar Osmani then traveled to Sofia on Sunday to sign a protocol with his Bulgarian colleague Teodora Gentschowska, which provides for individual steps and deadlines for settling disputes over the interpretation of history. Bulgaria’s Prime Minister Kyril Petkov, who is only in office as an executive, praised the joint step in this “not easy process”.
“I understand that you are frustrated, I am too,” says Ursula von der Leyen
Shortly before the vote in Skopje, EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen campaigned massively for the French compromise proposal: “I encourage you: seize this opportunity,” she told the North Macedonian parliament on Thursday, trying to allay fears that Bulgaria could still undermine the accession process in the future: “Bilateral issues such as the interpretation of history are not a condition of the accession talks,” she said.
But critics doubt that the agreement will really pave the way for the country towards Europe. “The problem is that the EU has often lied to us,” political scientist Zoran Nechev from the Institute for Democracy in Skopje told the French daily Le Monde: According to Nechev, “pro-European intellectuals and experts” like himself harbor massive doubts. In recent years, North Macedonia’s hopes for EU accession negotiations have repeatedly been disappointed. In 2019, the government at the time added “North” to the name of the country in order to defuse a conflict with Greece.
A little later, France surprisingly vetoed accession talks with North Macedonia and Albania, and then came the Bulgarian blockade. “I understand that you are frustrated, I am too,” von der Leyen said in Skopje. But now the EU Commission is trying to spread a spirit of optimism: Prime Minister Kovacevski is expected to attend an intergovernmental conference in Brussels this Tuesday.
However, further rapprochement could also fail due to resistance from within Macedonia: the agreement with Bulgaria ultimately provides for North Macedonia to change its constitution. This requires a two-thirds majority, including votes from the opposition party VRMO-DPMNE. She has already made it clear that she is not available for this.